Action Alert! Conservative School Board Members Under Fire, Need Your Support
August 18, 2023 | Montgomery County, TX
Conservative school board members in Montgomery County are being persecuted for exposing pornographic library books and the indoctrination of children in our schools.
Most recently, ABC 13 ran an August 10 story insinuating that Conroe ISD Board Member, Melissa Dungan, was offended by “a poster showing hands of people of different races.” In reality, Dungan was speaking out against the racism promoted by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.
According to Dungan, “DEI pushes the narrative of “Safe Spaces” which implies that the rest of Conroe ISD is not a safe space for all children. This should be completely unacceptable for CISD administrators, board members and all employees.”
Local Christian Activist, Dr. Alexander Harris, analyzed the poster, stating:
“First, this is NOT a rainbow, which has seven colors - Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red. Rather, this is a banner with five colors representing LGBTQ. The five hands with varying skin tones merely represent the various ethnic groups who are welcome under the LGBTQ banner. So this poster is part of the Atheist Ideology, and it violates the Conroe ISD policy against the display of personal ideologies in the school classrooms and hallways.”
State Representative Steve Toth (HD 15) told the Montgomery County Republican Party that DEI is creating division in our schools.
“Melissa Dungan was courageous enough to call out these ideology posters at CISD. These Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion “Safe Spaces” have done more to divide America in the last 50 years than anything else,” said Toth.
The Texas Legislature passed House Bill 3979 in the 87th session and Senate Bill 17 in the 88th session to protect students from DEI indoctrination that promotes the ideology that some students are inherently racist.
In a February letter to all heads of state agencies and state-funded university systems, Governor Greg Abbott’s Chief of Staff, Gardner Pate, stated that DEI “has been manipulated to push policies that expressly favor some demographic groups to the detriment of others. … Rather than increasing diversity, these DEI initiatives are having the opposite effect…”
Nationwide, left-leaning news outlets picked up the story criticizing Dungan for speaking out against the poster. At the August 15 Conroe ISD School Board meeting, Oak Ridge High School English teacher, Theresa Neman, responded by testifying in support of choosing her own posters and books for her classroom without oversight. Her choice of words, including the statement, “If I can’t choose posters and I can’t choose books, then don’t make me choose bullets” was regarded as a threat by some attendees, with some local community members calling for her to be fired.
CISD Response
A community member who contacted CISD Superintendent Curtis Null with concerns about the teacher’s comments received this response:
Superintendent Null is referring to a discussion of House Bill 3 and school safety brought forward by conservative Trustee Misty Odenweller at the August 1 Special School Board meeting. As part of the discussion, board members debated the pros and cons of allowing trained teachers to carry guns on campus as a “first line of defense,” but no vote was held on the issue. House Bill 3 will require school boards to ensure that at least one armed security officer is present during regular school hours at each district campus. It becomes effective on September 1, 2023.
Regardless of Neman’s views on arming teachers on campus, her statement, “If I am not professional enough to choose my posters and I am not professional enough to choose my books, please do not make me professional enough to choose who lives and who dies” should be troubling to anyone with a student in her class. Neman remains listed as a teacher on the CISD website.
Whether Neman likes it or not, teachers are the guardians of their students during school hours. The choice to protect students should not be used to make a public statement about preferences on displaying her personal ideologies in the classroom; her decision to use it as such brings her professionalism into question.
All Texas public school teachers are subject to State Board of Education, legislative, and school board guidelines when choosing instructional materials. It’s not a free-for-all in Texas public schools. (For example, see Texas Education Code 28.0022(a)(4).)
Additional Attacks Against Dungan
Precinct 31 Chair Betty Anderson attended the August 15 CISD School Board meeting and reported that additional speakers were “bashing Melissa Dungan and other conservative board members, making false accusations of racism and other divisive claims. The room was full and people were standing in the back. Probably a fourth of the speakers were in favor of conservative social and fiscal issues. Republicans need to show up and speak up if we want to have credibility and make a difference.”
These are the types of responses incited by irresponsible, skewed stories from leftist media outlets that leave out the harmful effects of DEI in their reporting.
TAKE ACTION!
Godly men and women are needed to stand with our Christian Conservative board members who are putting themselves on the line for our kids! School boards make decisions based on “community values,” which are determined by input they receive from the public.
“We cannot let the Left intimidate us and must stand up for what is right to protect our children,” Dr. Harris said.
Please pray continually for conservative school board members in Montgomery County and watch the Montgomery County Republican Party calendar for upcoming school board meetings. You can sign up to speak or simply attend and show your support by clapping loudly for speakers you agree with. This is an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of children in our community.
You can contact CISD Superintendent Curtis Null at cnull@conroeisd.net. You can contact the CISD School Board to express your support for Trustee Melissa Dungan here.
“Meanwhile, we need to be thinking about four additional Mama Bears or Papa Bears to run in the next CISD election,” Anderson added.